I would have made this comment a long time ago, but I'm not a big fan of guns and death. Still, on tv it's all fictional, so I don't care how many people die on screen. Meanwhile, it becomes unbearable to watch how many times you see the same thing happen. So here goes, after many years of watching annoyed, just for the sake of making movie scripts a little more believable.

See, a gun, as opposed to a knife, is a long range weapon. And the perfect range is probably a few meters away from the hostage. At this range, you are less likely to miss, while you're still at a safe distance from any hand combat attacks. Moving closer to the victim does not improve your position, it compromises it. Why, because once you come close enough to the victim for them to reach you, they can disarm you before you can say 'bastard, you killed my father'. It's mostly newbies doing this, apparently we as the public are supposed to believe that they are so dumb as to think 'this bad guy will get more freaked out if I put the gun to his head, oooh cold metal'. And then what happens? The bad guy takes the gun away.

Could they possibly make it any more predictable? :lazy:

Sometimes there an be more to an introduction than meets the eye. Or less. I have a nasty habit of tuning out *exactly* as the other person is telling me their name. I don't know why it happens, I get this brain freeze quite involuntarily. It's like I receive the information and then shut off immediately, no time to commit the information to short term memory, it falls between the cracks. I have no control over it, when I first meet a person I keep thinking about it "ok now don't tune out" and then 30 seconds later it happens anyway. Knowing a name isn't that big a deal, it's not like you have to start every sentence with their name, but it's a little tense cause you never know when you're going to need that information. So I tried to find out without asking, sometimes it takes a bit of time. When I moved into my new house, I met all the roommates and of course I missed one of the names. It took me 2 weeks to recover it.

But then there's the other side of the introduction and I've no idea what goes on there. For some reason, whenever I say my name, the other person repeats it as if to verify. As if I have such a complicated name.  :confused:

For some reason I'm never just on time for anything in life. I'm always either early or late, sometimes too early or too late. Appointments, classes, trains, flights. Too early. On my last flight, I was at the airport a whopping 2.5h in advance. For appointments and classes I'm often up to 15 minutes early, which is pointless because I end up walking around the block until it's time. Why am I early? I don't want to be late. When I'm late, I'm rarely just a little late (usually I take precaution and turn up too early as mentioned). When I don't, when something's come up or I've dropped the ball, I'm usually later than just late. Deadlines, exams. Too late. Not as a rule, but sometimes. If I'm not too late, I'm late. Not late to hand in something or show up, but late in starting. I've often studied for exams the night before. Of course I _planned_ to start 3 days in advance, but that always gets pushed back. The same with assignments, start late and rush to get it done on time. Do I ever start right on time? No. But sometimes I start early, get it done way before anyone else does. Then I rest on my laurels and start slacking. Then the next assingment comes along and I'm late. Hopefully not too late. But being on time isn't always as satisfying as one might think. 6 days ago 'we' celebrated Queens Day here in Utrecht. Well, more like they did, it didn't exactly phase me much. I planned to walk around town and take some pictures to document the event. Instead, I lingered around the house and by the time I stepped outside, it was 8pm. It turns out 8pm is too late to start celebrating Queens Day. By that time the town was filled with lots of garbage and orange banners *after* the people who had been there. Well there were still people about, but not many. Today is Liberation Day (yes, from World War 2). Resident Dutchman and All Round Expert Erik tracked down a celebration event in Utrecht for me to go to. Yes, he's a wizard with web searchees. The website even had a map and I thought "oh it's not far from here". I knew I was looking for a park, on the way I went into a supermarket to do some much needed restocking and having found no park, I thought "I don't want to carry this fruit around, it'll go bad". So I returned home. It was 4pm. I had planned to get to that park at 2.30. Well anyway. The stores here close at 6, so I thought I'd go shopping before it's too late, I needed some sandals. Later on, I felt like taking a walk in my new sandals, the event in the park was supposed to last until 10.30. Hell, why not. Turns out the park isn't nearby, it's a 25 minute walk. And I wouldn't have found it earlier cause it's much further than I thought it was. I get to the park, it's dark, there's a stage, a band playing music that isn't much to write home about, there are lots of booths selling beer and whatnot aaand lots of people. Although I was late by conventional standards, there were actually people on the way in so apparently I was right on time. I walk around the park, make sure I cover all the ground and I head home. Wasn't exactly much to see. But at least I wasn't too late. Yay.

If you've ever dieted, have you noticed that during the diet you crave the evil foods (junk food, candy etc) a lot more than otherwise? I keep trying to keep myself on a diet of salads, which I keep failing at, but when I'm not dieting I eat mostly regular food, without a lot of indulgences. Then when I go on a diet, I suddenly feel a much stronger urge to pig out. :lazy:

disturbed. (Yes, I've taken a leaf out of Ash's blog and opened with a song title.) Disturbed at how ridiculously seriously (how do you like the double adverb?) people take the biking regulations in this town. I've known it from day one of my biking here that I would eventually get in trouble for not paying much attention to the make belief, fairy tale rules they try to enforce on bikers.

• Biking in the city center. Fine.
• Biking at night without a light. Fine.
• Biking at night wtih just a front light. Fine.
• Biking on the pedestrian sidewalk. Fine.
• Running a red light (not the real traffic light, the little bike lights for kids) across an intersection where there's no traffic because a) there are no cars in sight or b) everyone is waiting for a green light for 3 minutes. Fine.

I've committed all of those heinous crimes. And then there's cops. Lots of cops. Walking the beat, in cars, on bikes even. It never bothered me to see cops in the past, I wouldn't see them often but when I did, they were just cops. Now I live with a fear that I'm gonna get a fine for biking. It hasn't happened, but at any time I see a cop when I'm on my bike, I immediately take stock of the situation "am I in violation of some mickey mouse rule right now?". Often I am, like biking down one street at night without a light (I always forget to take them) and a police car goes past me. But then at the end of the street, the light turns red, the car stops. By the time it will turn green, I will already be there too, so what if they notice then that I'm not using a light? So I turned back, went the opposite way.

The number of lives I've put in jeopardy due to my 'reckless' biking? 0. The number of people I've injured? 0.

Today I was off to the supermarket, I unlock my bike outside my house, get on it, ride for half a block and I see 3 wannabe cops approaching me. They're not real cops, they just write parking tickets. I pass them and one of them waves at me. "What's this, are they pulling me over to check my papers, is this Soviet Russia?" But they didn't stop walking, the woman waved at me and kept walking. I look back at them, the guy makes a gesture. I stop and try to find out what's going on. He starts talking in Dutch. I ask him to say it in English, he keeps on talking. I look at him point blank like what he's saying does not even sound like a real language. Then he says something about Engels to the woman and the 3 of them form a task force to squeeze out a sentence in English. "You are not allowed to bike on the sidewalk, you have to go in the street." They saw me unlock my bike, get on it and bike for 200m tops, this is where they choose to lecture me? I *was* going in the street, but since this particular stretch of street is trafficed, it makes more sense from a safety point of view to merge in further ahead. I didn't try to explain this as I think it would be lost on them, but in this particular case there's a sidewalk and a street, with no marking on it even, no section for bikes. No biker sidewalk either. Nor was there anyone on the sidewalk either, I guess the parking ticket people want to make sure they have the sidewalk all to themselves.

Narcotics and prostitution are both legal in this country, what the hell for? It doesn't affect me in the least, just like it never did before I got here. Make those illegal again and let me bike freely, you nazis.